The Myth of the Average User

This particular bit of history will live forever in my head.

In the late 1940s, the U.S. Air Force faced a deadly crisis: their pilots were crashing at an alarming rate, with 17 crashes in a single day at its peak. The military knew something was terribly wrong, but the cause eluded them.

Enter Lieutenant Gilbert Daniels, who conducted a groundbreaking study of 4,063 pilots. His discovery was shocking: when measuring ten critical body dimensions used for cockpit design, not a single pilot fell within the average range across all measurements. Not one.

This is the “flaw of averages” – the mathematical reality that designing for the average means designing for no one. The average user, like the average pilot, is a statistical ghost.

The Air Force’s solution revolutionized aviation: they abandoned the myth of the average pilot and instead created adjustable equipment. Cockpits with customizable seats, moveable control panels, and adaptable displays became the new standard – a design philosophy that saved countless lives.

This lesson extends far beyond aviation. While I always knew that averages could be misleading (after all, a single outlier can dramatically skew results), I never realized just how fundamentally flawed the concept of “average” could be.

The truth is simple: none of your users are average. Each person who interacts with your product brings their own unique needs, preferences, and ways of working. The key to exceptional design isn’t creating the perfect solution for an imaginary average user – it’s building flexibility into your core experience.

When designing software, you can (and should) have strong opinions about optimal workflows. But you should also embrace edge cases – whether it’s the power user who needs advanced features or the newcomer who needs a simplified interface – to create solutions that work for everyone.

Want to dive deeper into this fascinating story? Check out the original article in the Toronto Star for more details.